After being on meth for a few years, my behavior had become pretty erratic. I suppose I thought I was Superman or something because I attempted to pick up a loaded cargo trailer, weighing at least 7,000 lbs. with a simple furniture dolly.

There wasn’t anything funny about it at the time. I was dead serious in believing I could actually do something like that. Now, I cannot help but look back on that moment and laugh a little. If I were one of the people around watching when this happened, I would have thought this guy really has all the way lost his mind. I would have had to laugh at such craziness.

I did pick the trailer up; however, it came crashing down much faster than it went up. It landed on my ankle, crushing it. The doctors had to go in there and repair several breaks and fractures. I still have several plates and screws running through my left ankle and foot.

Anyway, I was already addicted to meth and this incident injured me pretty bad, causing me to actually need opiate pain medication. This injury caused me extreme pain for quite some time. Later, after it was time for me to get off the pain medication, I realized that I couldn’t. Now, I was addicted to them too. My mind was telling me that I was still seriously hurting; I didn’t know it was the addiction controlling what was going on in my mind.

They started writing me larger and larger quantities of pain medications, mainly opiates, but others as well. In hindsight, I see that it didn’t take long until my monthly prescription of 120 to 150 OxyContin pain pills just wasn’t taking the pain away. So my doctor added 180 Hydrocodone pain pills to the mix, calling it “Break through Pain Medication.” He also started me on Xanax, stating that these opiate pain medications will cause depression and severe anxiety. Here, “take four a day” he said. I now call it, “keep’em all the way crazy medication.”

Some time had passed, of course, I kept going to this doctor month after month for my prescriptions. One day, I had an appointment, several television news crews were there. My doctor just got his licenses suspended and later permanently revoked for writing massive amount of narcotics. He was labeled the Number “1” narcotic prescribing doctor in the state.

So there I was, needing my medications refilled for the month, realizing I was currently in a dilemma with no immediate solution. The office I was going to must have had my specific dilemma on their minds too, because as I was just getting ready to leave the office and a nurse called my name. She said, “Mr. Lee, our other doctor will see you from now on. He will take good care of you.” So, I started seeing the new doctor. It wasn’t long until he started wanting to increase my meds a bit more.

After a while I was getting really tired of living like I was. After a couple of months I talked to my doctor about my thinking, telling him I felt I was very addicted to the OxyContin and Hydrocodone being prescribed to me and that I didn’t want to live the rest of my life like that.

So he had a solution to my problem. He stopped writing the current pain meds and started writing me Methadone, another opiate, while also keeping me on the Xanax. He stated that this was almost like a miracle drug for people who have an addiction to opiates. This really didn’t make any sense to me then, and it doesn’t make any more sense now, but he was the doctor I thought, he knows much more about it than I do. Now if there were ever a drug called the devil’s drug, the combination of Methadone and Xanax was the poster pills beside the definition.

At first the doctor had gotten me to feeling good about changing pain medications. I remember thinking, “at least I am getting off of the harsher opiates I had been on for quite some time.” Wasn’t long before I found I had to take more and more of those. I got hooked on them too.

My doctor kept increasing my dosage, month after month until he was writing me 360 Methadone 10mg and 150 to 180 Xanax 1mg, each month. For some crazy reason I believe this guy thought he was actually helping me. I mean, I told him I was having addiction issues. He did switch me from what I knew I was having addiction issues with.

This was an older doctor so I thought he surely knew what he was doing. I remember him telling me that Methadone was a great drug for opiate addicted patients. Surely, this doctor knew what he was talking about.

After realizing I was having addition issues with Methadone I thought, “well, maybe the doctor didn’t know the full effects of this drug. After all, he did lead me to believe it was a fairly new pain medication treatment for opiate addicted patients. But wait a minute. New drug?

After doing some research, I have found that Methadone has been around for years, 80 years, to be exact. The name Methadone may not be that old, but Dolophine is. Dolophine is Methadone. Dolophine was created by German scientists in 1937 and was approved for use in the United States 10 years later in 1947. S

o, the doctor had to know how it all worked. It wasn’t new at all, and the combination of Xanax and Methadone together, he had to know the effects of those drugs. The effects of the combination of those two drugs are as close as it gets to the effects of pure heroin.

Needless to say, this doctor lost his license as well. So, I was referred to another, then another and so on. Now, I do take full responsibility for all of my actions while I was using drugs, both known and unknown.

I will have to deal with it until I take my final breath. I’m the one who kept the appointments. I’m the one who kept going to the pharmacy. I’m the one who has taken every pill that I ever took. No one forced me, not ever! I had been tricked several times, but never forced. These doctors, or at least the ones I was choosing to go to, knew how to keep the patient coming back even after the patient told that they were becoming addicted to some of these drugs. So while they never forced me, they definitely encouraged my addiction.

There may be times when things happen and you may actually need narcotic pain medication. If it does, take your medication but please be very careful. Something as simple as a small injury can have major consequences as it pertains to drug addiction. If you are injured and find yourself being prescribed narcotic pain medication, do whatever it takes to only take them for a minimal amount of time and at minimal intervals. The majority of injuries do heal and your body will most often, instinctively adjust to function while minimizing discomfort.

You don’t want to end up like I was. You don’t want to become dependent on any drug to the extreme that you want to quit using but can’t. I know for me, I hope I never see another Xanax or opiate again because if I do, I might just take them, opening the door to hell one more time. I never know, no matter how much I may not want to use, the cravings will most likely always be there lurking around the corner. This is how addiction works.

When I cannot control these urges to drugs now, I always turn it completely over to Christ. I am finding that this is becoming my new habit. I sure know it is the most positive and greatest one. Try it out for yourself! I believe you will find the same peace that I experience quite often. It keeps growing and getting stronger and stronger. The storm is honestly becoming calmer as each day passes.

An addict, a child of God, a Christian,

Phillip Lee